1.Worldgate Online

Editing/Standardisation: Medicine Melancholy
Original Translation: Medicine Melancholy

It was said that the entire game was born from the mind of a single
genius.
The genius, named Aureo Uber, suddenly appeared in the world at a
certain time, in a certain country.
Up until that point, he was an unknown person who had achieved little
noteworthy results.
The reason for his sudden emergence and fame was his success in
analyzing the signals of the brain, a field that had been stagnant, and
his new technology, which could even be called “magical”. He was able
to create a full-dive VR device, which at the time was being given up as
a pipe dream.
However, he was only interested in pursuing the technology in specific
fields, even though it was supposed to have various applications in a
large number of fields.
After having brought a number of groundbreaking medical technologies
to the world, he simply sold off his interest from them, leaving only the
minimum necessary for his own purposes.
With his vast wealth in hand, he went straight to Japan and knocked on
the door of a company that had sold game hardware in the past.
With the help of this company, which had a taste for the progressive,
he threw away his own assets to found a game development company
and immersed himself in the creation of a new type of game… a fulldive
VRMMO.
And so several years passed.
With the development of AR and VR technology through the new
technology he brought, the world had changed at a dizzying pace…
leaving his name buried in the flow of time.
His name only resurfaced when a certain game hardware was launched.
Until his reemergence, other companies had been working on full-dive
VR games, but due to funding and technology issues, the ones that
came out were not very successful, and gamers were waiting with
resignation for such a dream-like game to appear one day.
And the actual product that appeared, bearing the name of the man
who created the foundation of full-dive technology, was more than
enough to reward their expectations, or even exceed them.
Lag due to insufficient processing power of the equipment was almost
nonexistent, and the hardware performance ran comfortably as long as
the communication environment is sufficient.
A different world with a vast field that cannot be fully explored, an
elaborate, beautiful, and wide-open landscape.
As the world’s first full-dive MMORPG “Worldgate Online” was released
worldwide at the same time, there was no end to the number of people
who wanted to buy it. However, for some reason, Aureo, the creator of
the game, had to limit the number of shipments, resulting in a stock
shortage that lasted for several years.
The game also achieved massive popularity due to the high degree of
freedom in character makeup, which allows the user to customize the
character to any extent within size, body shape, and capacity limits,
based on the body provided by the official service.
However, most of the amateurs could not produce satisfactory results,
and with a few exceptions, they had to purchase officially provided
materials (although they boast a tremendous degree of freedom) or
data produced and sold for commercial purposes by companies and
other organizations.
Another 7 years had passed.
The hardware had become more widely available, development tools
and core programs have been released, and companies had released
various full-dive VRMMORPGs, dispersing the newcomers to the world.
The hype for “Worldgate Online”, the oldest VRMMORPG, had died
down… until a few months ago, when it suddenly regained its vitality.
The initial level cap of 80 was gradually increased through several
version upgrades, eventually reaching 110 after a balance patch earlier
this year.
Most notably, however, was the announcement of the “Reincarnation
System”. This was something not uncommon in MMORPGs of the past,
where players could roll back their levels to 1 and change classes to the
newly added tertiary reincarnation class, while keeping the skills they
had learned so far and becoming a higher race with higher growth race
to compensate.
The uproar intensified three months after implementation, when the
first reincarnation appeared, overcoming the barrier of a far greater
amount of experience required than ever before.
“Unique Class”
Every player could only choose one out of three classes according to
the race they chose (Human, Highborn and Demon). These classes were
initially the only ones available in the game.
The existence of this unique class was reported by those who reached
reincarnation first, and gamers who yearned for such “specialness”
began a frenzied leveling competition.
Popular hunting grounds quickly became a shouting contest between
the party recruiters.
There were also a large number of people who wanted to kick others
down, and for a while, the security in the game deteriorated
significantly.
The irony was that most of those who were crowned winners were
those who had stoically studied and worked hard while looking at the
ugliness of the situation.
After half a year had passed, such disturbances had subsided as most of
the unique classes had been filled, and peace had begun to return to
the game once again.
Yet, there were classes that no one had reached yet, and those in
question continued to hunt with dead eyes, in a mood of half-hearted
resignation. The message board for these classes had always been
drowned in a funeral-like mood.
Namely, the support classes and especially, the recovery-type Priest
class.
In other games, it was often a relatively popular position, but in
“Worldgate Online” it was somehow unfavorable to the extent that one
could sense the malicious intent of the management.
First of all, support classes in VRMMOs have a fatal flaw: they were not
exhilarating to play.
In particular, the Priest class actually had a lot to do, as they mainly
provided preventative support, such as managing allies’ HP and
reducing damage taken.
However, their work was rarely visible, and while their roles were busy,
they remained very humble and behind-the-scenes helpers. They were
not at all appreciated by those who wanted to swing swords with their
own hands, cast magic, or fight powerful monsters by moving their own
bodies.
Combined with the fact that only one character could be created per
account, it was always competing for the top spot in the worst class
category in the population survey.
Adding to the population decline was the difficulty of playing as a
character of a different gender than the real one in this game.
There was nothing wrong with trying, but the only way to purchase this
game, or rather the game hardware, was to order it through the official
online store, for which you were required to submit a copy of your
residence certificate, and the device was sent to you with that
information inputted into it.
For health reasons, the device only allowed the user to select the
gender assigned at the time of registration.
Although the management had set restrictions at the time of sale, it
was the user’s own responsibility afterwards, and since there were no
restrictions on its usage, there was no reason why others couldn’t use
the device.
In other words, if someone wanted to “cross”-play, they had to prepare
to pay for the not-so-cheap equipment and asked someone of the
opposite gender out, who they knew wasn’t interested in the game, to
buy the hardware instead because they wanted to “cross”-play.
The developers were too cruel. The “barrier of entry” was impassable.
95% of those who tried had failed at this stage.
For this reason, the male-female ratio of player characters in this game
leaned heavily toward the male side.
Many players of online games with magic characters, especially support
characters, preferred to play as girls, while male characters tended to
avoid support characters because of their desire to fight in a goodlooking
way.
And most of the female players would feel frustrated by the strict
difficulty of progression.
For some reason, this game did not have a party bonus for experience,
which was common in other MMORPGs, but rather, experience was
divided among all members, with the difference in levels taken into
account and adjusted accordingly.
As the number of party members increased, the amount of experience
gained per player decreased at an accelerating rate.
Support classes generally had low self-battling ability, and if they
wanted to solo leveling, they had to choose a much lower-ranked
opponent and patiently accumulate a minuscule amount of experience.
As the game progressed and players’ combat skills and tactics
improved, the focus of leveling shifted to how to defeat large numbers
of enemies quickly and efficiently, and rather than adding a healer,
attackers were added to increase turnover speed.
If the enemy could be defeated before it takes damage, the healer
became a burden that just stood around.
On the other hand, if a party had a lot of recovery work, it meant that
the party’s fighting ability was poor, and these people generally tried to
put the blame on others, even those who were in a weaker position.
In other words, the target was the recovery-type who was struggling to
get things back on track.
The more convenient thing was that, especially in recent years, there
was a gap of several years between the time the level cap reached 100
and the time 110 was released.
Then, if such support positions were not really in demand, the balance
of supply and demand was reversed, as they could be said to be
indispensable in endgame content after completing level up, such as
raid bosses.
What awaited those support classes who had acquired front-line
abilities through hardship was a blood-soaked struggle.
There were many who gritted their teeth to help others and raised their
level, only to be confronted with the reality of a crowded battlefield
where they were competing with each other, and malicious users were
sticking to them and flipping them off.
As a side note, the initial clothing for female Priests had been updated
several times, perhaps as part of the management’s desire to increase
the population, and it had gained a reputation for being one of the
prettiest costumes in the game’s user popularity polls.
The game had always attracted a certain number of beginners who
want to enjoy fashion, but their dreams… were often crushed without
mercy. Users continue to watch in horror as their characters, along with
the expensive costumes either made by companies or by themselves,
disappear into the data graveyard, in which they call “official honey
traps”.